Kinect Speech
The Need
Therapy for children with cerebral palsy (CP) typically involves repetition of motor and speech tasks over many sessions. For any young child, therapy programs quickly become boring, which discourages adherence to the program. A reward-based game application that accomplishes therapeutic goals would conceivably encourage exercise participation and maintain motivation, resulting in greater adherence to therapy programs and better health outcomes.
The Project
The team developed a Kinect-enabled video game that provides physical and speech therapy to children with CP within the context of an engaging, interactive virtual environment. The player assumes the role of a young spy-in-training and is given tasks and mini-games to progress through his/her training. Tasks and mini-games elicit expansive physical motions of the upper extremities, upright sitting posture, and speech projection with the aim of increasing speech volume and strengthening motor control. Data correlating speech volume and upper-body motion is collected and formatted on a web page accessible to clinicians and researchers.
Current Status
This project is complete.